Marsh Harrier vs Teal

We've all seen marsh harriers quartering fields or reedbeds, dropping down every so often and sometimes coming back up with a small and unfortunate prey item. What I'd not seen before was a marsh harrier doggedly persuing a single target for minutes on end like a total bastard.

I first picked it up hovering low over the water between the causeways. Nothing unusual about a marsh harrier at Abberton, but the light was great so I stopped to watch. He didn't stray far from one area, concentrating hard on the water, periodically diving, sometimes grabbing at the surface. For a while it almost looked like he was fishing, but I kept getting glimpses of something breaking the surface and going back under to avoid the harrier as it dove. This continued for around 5 minutes. It was hard to get an eye on whatever it was he was after - he came down on it hard and fast each time it took a split-second breath - but eventually the target, which turned out to be a teal, made the mistake of straying into shallow water. The harrier dropped on to it like a stone, standing on it and holding it under the water for a good half a minute, wings held upright in the air to keep them dry. When he took off again he was pretty soggy and it took a couple of attempts to get himself and the waterlogged teal airborne. He flew a few metres and flopped into the nearby long-grass to properly finish ruining the teal's day.

Pictures are all enlargeable. (And slightly blurry.)

Repeatedly hovering and diving at teal, just visible behind mallards..

... again and again, ignoring all the other potential lunches...

... finally landing on target teal and holding wings above the water...

... before managing to take off, after a considerable effort.

I've never seen a harrier doing something like this before, so I've no idea if this kind of lengthy and determined hunt is a regular thing. I assume he was deliberately targetting the one bird over and over to tire it out but it looked like a very effort-intensive way of doing this, with the long minutes spent hovering, diving, getting mobbed and finally standing chest-deep in water. There were plenty other waterfowl in the area he was hunting that, while flighty, weren't actively taking flight and I'd have thought there were probably other easier targets than this one. Or maybe, being a relatively small bird, the harrier decided that a mallard-sized meal represents enough of a challenge that sticking with a longer pursuit for a smaller prey item was worth it. I guess individual harriers might have favoured prey items and hunting strategies. His mind was clearly made up and eventually it did pay off. A very entertaining and impressive few minutes.

The weather made the visit thoroughly enjoyable, even if it was fairly quiet. I finally caught up with a smew, a single redhead between the causways, and a couple of white-fronts were hiding in with the greylags. Loads of presumably local buzzards were up enjoying the weather, with one of two birds flying much higher with a bit more purpose that I assume were just passing through. A handful of goosanders were scattered around and another pair of marsh harriers with a darker male were soaring over the main body as seen from the old visitor centre drive. There was nothing of note up at Abberton Church.

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Went to Whipsnade yesterday with the last of the Girl's free tickets. Because zoos are awesome. Took the old camera lens, a cheap 75-300mm, which functioned perfectly, taking crisper pictures than it ever had done before. So I guess the problem, visible in the marsh harrier pictures above, is with the 400mm rather than the body. Which is annoying. I'd still like to try the 400mm with a different body, but it looks like I'm set up for a big old repair bill either way.

A user's guide to BirdForum's "Rare Bird News" section

I like BirdForum. It is, in terms of forums about birds, without parallel and if you don't pay for news it's invaluable. However, I've noticed, as I'm sure most regular users have, that the Rare Bird News section is a bit predictable. Almost every thread follows the same pattern.

Now, if you're a newcomer to this busy forum of socially inept losers, might be a bit confusing and intimidating. How to fit in? How will your post follow the unwritten yet essential conventions of the forum?

Don't worry! Here's a helpful guide. I've tried to explain the most common phases that threads go through so you too can join in and not feel left out.

It all starts with news that a rare bird has been found...

"Confusion"

At this early stage, noone really knows what's going on. "Confusion" is most often people asking "OMG WHERE access details plz". Sometimes it manifests as "Suspicion" or "Doubt", at which point you might for example write "lol siberian shitchat? more likely a robin LOL" or "why wasn't news put out quicker? fkin supression >:[".

If there's even the slightest doubt that the bird is present, please feel free to cast wild aspersions about the quality of the observers, the possiblity of supression, the bird's wild credentials or anything else you feel might be (ir)relevant.  

"Useful Information And Related Content"

If the bird is present, and you can't think of any way to pretend that it's not, we'll enter the usually very short "Useful Information And Related Content" phase, where some users post things like where to park, where the bird actually is and how best to get good views, etc. This stage is entirely optional and widely discouraged. Sometimes, in the very best threads, it might not happen at all. If you must take part, get it over with quickly, and move on to the far better...

"Quick, derail it!"

The useful information out of the way, it's important that you start to derail things as quickly as possible. This is usually very easy. For instance, if the bird is in Ireland, Northern or not, you could start a lengthy and ill-informed "discussion" about internal/international borders and geographical regions. You might throw in an ID comment, for instance "the emarginations on the third and fourth anal feathers are totally wrong for loose-ringed gull" or "the secondary panel is clearly green-grey, not grey-green". Even if you can't get to the bird in question, have no interest in doing so or have no idea about its ID, don't worry - you can still take part. Simply say something like "oh, people still haven't seen one of these?! LOL TART'S TICK!" or "I simply don't understand why you would want to twitch this - you can see hundreds of them in their native [expensive foreign land]". 

With the thread now moving in the right direction - a broken one - we might move to the...

"Rose-Tinted Glasses" 

This is where users reminisce pointlessly about the past, gloat about it, and say things like "Ah yes, this reminds me of the '78 blue-nippled warbler at Slapton-Upon-Buttock, which I saw with Reginald Foreskin-Biscuit and the legendary late Keith Flaps. Needless to say, I won't be going for this bird and have nothing useful to add to the conversation". This is often a very lengthy and productive stage. Sometimes you might get several rose-tinted users who will fill the thread with inane ramblings and in-jokes that eventually derail it entirely in a useless backslap-fest that would be better placed in a thread of its own. This is a sign of a successful thread that's enjoyable for everyone, and totally not just the old guard from Scilly in the Halcyon Days.

"Complain like a pro"

By this point, most users have done the twitch, if they're going to. Sitting at home and arguing online is way more fun, so many don't bother to twitch at all. The "Complain" phase is an essential part of any good rarities thread - it's where you review the day's birding/forumming. You might say things like "shocking behavior and total lack of fieldcraft, wasn't like that in my day" or "it's simple innit the bird's welfare comes first innit", all the while knowing that you, as another anonymous, out of shape, greeny-brown-clad optics-toting loser like everyone else would have done exactly the same thing if you'd thought about it at the time. Other good targets for your entirely reasonable and well directed ire might include people who park badly or younger birders than yourself.

"Hooray, Thread Derailed!"

By this point, we've reached the endgame. Well done! Anything useful has been said and the thread is essentially pointless. The "Hooray, Thread Derailed!" phase is, needless to say, usually the longest phase of a thread. It's a free-for-all, really. You might choose to continue complaining about conduct, photographers, or how you just don't understand why people would want to travel for a bird like this because you saw one way back when. You might reminisce some more, chat with the old guys about the great twitches on Scilly, before any of the "teeny tickers" were on the scene and everything was better, or about how the 1987 Shinythroat at Little Skidmark was better than anything since. You could start a pointless argument with another user, or indulge in a spot of LGRE bashing. It's up to you! But whatever you choose to do, try and drag it out. You've got to make this last until the next rare bird thread.

When it all starts again...

Edit March 26th:

After a complaint in the "comments" section, I've added a picture. I hope it enhances your experience visiting this page.

Sunday birding

An extremely low tide this morning coincided with me being in the flat with the time to stare at it. The low water meant that even we on the ground floor could see the nearside mud. By standing on the bed looking down through an overly heightened scope I was able to sift through waders with a little more ease than usual, although that depends how you define "ease". I was looking through around 50 dunlin and 4 ringed plover on the off chance I might relocate and flat-tick a little stint seen a couple of hundred metres downriver a few days when I found a sanderling, an excellent bird for Grays. If you're interested, it's the fifth sanderling I've had here, after a group of four seen on the far bank back in the autumn. Four turnstone spent the morning directly outside the flat, and three curlews, five grey plover, 25 teal and the usual hordes of lapwing and redshank made up the rest of a fairly productive if flat-tickless hour.

This afternoon I opted for the selfish option of birding, rather than hospital visiting. I went to Abberton.

Up north, relatively, there's still a lot more snow than there is in Grays, with some roads still covered. Made for some exciting driving.

As usual I stopped first at the Layer Breton causeway, where I failed utterly to find the long-tailed duck, any smew, or any scaup amongst the hordes of shovelers, wigeon, teal, and that disgusting chinese swan goose thing from last time. I checked twitter and thanks to the magic of mobulate phonterwebs and the generosity of its users I soon left for Abberton Church, where the long-tailed duck was fairly quick and easy to locate. Thanks, by the way, to the guy who drove ahead so I could follow him there... Views were distant and brief; for every four seconds it spent on the surface it spent a minute or two under water. It did spend all its time in the one area though, making picking it up after each dive easy. This is the nearest thing I have to a photo of a long-tailed duck at Abberton; a very confused long-tailed duck I found just inside Blakeney Point a few Mays ago.

This all seems a very, very long time ago.

After seeing the long-tail, an Essex tick, no less, and a bird I didn't see at all last year, I toured the reservior looking for open water. There were loads of goldeneye and a few goosander but they didn't nearly make up for being the only birder in the east of the UK who didn't see a smew this weekend. However, taking advantage of it being a Sunday, parking in a works entrance and viewing from the closed causeway easily made up for it as I located two scaup out on the main body of the reservior. Scaup are brilliant, one of those "if you think it's one, it's not" birds.

Not coots.

Back at Layer Breton, the apparently regular barn owl was in it's usual bush, with a hen harrier sitting nearby and three short eared owls in their regular field. From the old visitor centre drive I had a couple of white-fronted geese hanging around with some greylags out on the ice and a huge flock of skylarks.

Two of three distant shorties in there somewhere...

And then I went home. The end.

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I took the camera out today for some more thorough testing. It's definitely borked, though inconsistently so. Sometimes it was like this:

Acceptable.

And then others, it was like this:

Unacceptable.

Arse.

Another day, another flat tick

Apparently, when you reach adulthood you're supposed to stop enjoying snow and become either fearful of it or incredibly grumpy whenever it happens. I must have missed that lesson because I love snow.

However, I do hate how we as a nation deal with it, or more accurately fail to deal with it and I also hate how, for at least a week prior to a possible snow event our media goes into snowverdrive (HAHAHAH) and bombards us with endless shit about how we're all going to die. As I'm sure you're already aware today was one such snowpocalypse. I didn't die. If you weren't aware of that before, you are now. I was able to spend most of the day either watching the river from the flat, which is a rare luxury, or poking about on the seawall in front of it.

As you can see, we live in a really nice area.

Almost promising migrant scrub and junkie hangout

The cold snap has bought a few more birds into the river, but despite putting in the hours  Grays didn't really produce the goods like other sites along the river did. In terms of waders and waterfowl I didn't get anything more than decent amounts of the usual suspects - Redshank, lapwing and teal numbers are all noticeably up. Grey plovers headed upriver on and off all day, with around a dozen or so knocking about our immediate stretch of the Thames, but I didn't get any of my target birds - godwits, golden plover or either of the snipes. Best birds on the river itself were two great-crested grebes, only the third and fourth I've ever seen here, and the kittiwakes, fast becoming "normal" expected sightings, are still hanging around. As usual they're almost exclusively seen following ships when the tide is highish. On a quick walk this morning I had a rock pipit just up from the flat that unfortunately doesn't make the list, but that's just a matter of time.

Real proper birds, just in front of (if not directly in view from) our flat

The only real birds of note were two adult little gulls that went upriver just before 1pm. They were a long way out, almost over Swanscombe Point, and hard to pick out against the snowy background. I snapped off a few shots hoping to catch them and while one or other of the birds appears in several pictures and this is by far the best of the bunch. It's another one where I've had to circle the relevant part...

Awesome, huh?

(enter witty post title here)

Went to Rainham. Saw these. 

Didn't nearly get the killer shot I'd have wanted, given that they were, for bearded tits, quite showy. But it was bloody freezing, I was shooting through moving reeds and the birds tended to spend all their time with their backs to us, face down and arse up.

Not a lot else around though - couple of snipe, couple of green sands, a good number of pintail (for Rainham), a single stonechat and a lot of ice.

Back at home, I've had three long overdue flat ticks in the last couple of days, starting with a dunnock in the carpark yesterday. Never been so excited about a dunnock. With this mornings high tide, eight grey plover were knocking around with a few lapwings, a redshank and three dunlin and looking up towards Grays itself a distant coot finally made the list. Across the river we had an oystercatcher and a couple of turnstones while a single kittiwake went downriver with a ship. For the location, far more interesting birds than we had at Rainham...

What a badly cropped picture this is.

Anyway, this will probably be my last ever blog post, as according to the news we're due an apocalyptic snowfall any second now. It's apparently going to be as cold as -6 and we might even see 5 centimetres of snow... 

Well, either this is the end of the world as we know it, or the collective media's Hyperbole Machine (tm) has gone into snow-driven overdrive.